Business, Innovation and Managing Life (April 9, 2025)
Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qaQuestions include: Did you see the recent news about the dire wolves coming back from extinction? Is there a genuine business for bringing back extinct animals? - There are also scientists making hybrids by injecting extinct animal DNA into modern animals. Recently they made woolly mice. - But would our atmosphere sustain dinosaur life, considering there was more oxygen back then? - At the remarkable age of 15, you began doing things that many would consider grown-up. I'm just curious as to how you went about attacking things that you simply felt like attacking. There are some people who wonder about stuff but don't necessarily know where to begin. How did you get so emboldened, if you can recall what that felt like? - I am curious about the "health trackers" you currently use (without revealing anything too personal!). I see at the time, you used a Fitbit Charge 2 and ServiceConnect, etc. Do you still use these, or have you switched to an Apple Watch etc.? Asking because I love your idea of tracking all kinds of health data, and I especially agree that automated is best. - Going back to your answer to my question about AI agents, which I agree that most websites will be used for LLMs instead of humans, should Wolfram|Alpha's next product be like Alexa—perhaps called "Wolfie"? - How to build that sort of confidence, then? What if I overthink at all times? How to challenge if I'm old already? - Should my next venture be based on an intellectual curiosity that might develop into something organically or a big ambition? - Do you think someone will come up with an internal fitness tracker which would be more accurate? - Is capital becoming more free to take risks or more constrained because of complexity of high-earning businesses? - How do you deal with real exogenous risks (i.e. global pandemic), with respect to innovation and commercialization thereof? - What are some early finance tips and tricks to teach kids to prepare them for the future? - I feel like I became a friend with ChatGPT—is it healthy? - ChatGPT and my daily-driver LLMs definitely know and remember more about me than I do myself at this point! - That seems a great idea. In the "Computational X" program, why not something to teach financial literacy and key financial math (compounding etc.), notably for kids, in interactive forms? - When designing humanoid robots, what do you think is a key component design of them?
Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qaQuestions include: How would you, Stephen Wolfram, think about replacing textbooks in education? What are some better tools for the classroom? - Can you teach us how to be scientists? What's the first step? - Intellectual curiosity is required to be a good scientist. And moral character, to stand by what you find, even if controversial. - If you can explain it in simple terms, you understand it. - I wanted to be a scientist as a kid, but I was actively discouraged from doing that. What would you tell to a kid to encourage them? - How will new technology and especially GenAI change our education, and what role should parents play during this crucial transition? - Do you think it would be [good] to make some infrastructures to think more creatively, e.g. logging your thoughts and trying to dissect your mental models, etc.? - In my experience, the kids that should become scientists start asking, "How do we know that?" early on. And for most adults (especially teachers!), that is the hardest question. - I heard that physicists still don't understand how friction works. Is that true? - How would you answer where this universe gets its "expanding substance" from? - Would you be open to the possibility of other mathematics than the one we use now? Would be happy to hear your thoughts on this subject. - Do you think that the emergence of AI in our lives marks the end of curiosity, or the beginning of an era where curiosity will grow even greater because it will be satisfied? - What effect do you think wide-scale adoption of LLMs will have on the boundary of the knowable? - How do you feel about integrating 3D models, animations, AI... overall media, to learning science? For example, having as output a 3D model and animation of flight path instead of just numbers and plain text on paper? - How would you think about encryption in the age of AI and LLMs? It seems like they would be able to pick up the patterns with ease once exposed. - Is it possible to build a compact mechanical SHA256 encryption device that will be resistant to solar flares?
--------
1:19:39
History of Science & Technology Q&A (April 2, 2025)
Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qaQuestions include: Is there much history on scientists (well known or not) starting companies? - If Leibniz was around today, where do you think he would be working, what would he be doing if he was not in academia? - Any interesting suggestions for history to research? - What's the history of walking meetings? Were there notable practitioners before you? - Was the first GUI+mouse+keyboard predictable beforehand or was it a surprise at the time?
--------
38:48
Future of Science and Technology Q&A (March 28, 2025)
Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the future of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qaQuestions include: What roles do category and type theory play in our understanding and the future of mathematics? - What would be an example of a hierarchy of types in theoretical physics? - Would you ever take a trip on Blue Origin or Space X ? Do you see more for the future of space travel happening sooner or later? - Do you think humans could/will evolve to adapt to space travel? - Say you could teleport to the Moon or Mars instead of travel by spaceship—would you take that travel option? - Space is a very hazardous place compared to Earth (radioactivity etc.). Chips in space would need to be very shielded and hence very expensive, I believe. - Why don't we use shielded nuclear waste to heat buildings (like in the basement attached to the HVAC system, in secure buildings)? - Closer to Earth, what do you see as the short-to-medium term future for inhabited orbital space stations and beyond that, in the longer-term future? - From genetic issues to space travel damage, do you think the main advances and solutions will come more from preventing or from repairing or an equal mix of both? - How would you think about AI-controlled humans if bionic brains become mainstream?
--------
1:26:53
Future of Science and Technology Q&A (March 14, 2025)
Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the future of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qaQuestions include: What, exactly, is an "AI agent"? "Agentic"? It seems like nobody knows what those words actually mean today. - Can you tell us about the future of media/information consumption? Will we become a society of "AI summaries" as our main form of information gathering? - Before AI summaries, there were encyclopedias and textbooks and CliffsNotes and such, and while they were useful and convenient, they never became de facto. - When will we get the first AI/robot news reporter? I see these being useful in cases of dangerous live broadcasting like hurricanes, to keep people up to date. - How far are we from LLMs generating a Stephen Wolfram–style long-form post, with similar elucidations, based on a short prompt of the key insight or topic? - When you say the teaching is delegated to the machine, are you saying that the machine is telling the student what to think about instead of just answering questions? - Can a sentient AI "understand" how humans learn? If we would delegate to them the teaching of human kids, would that be compatible with a biological point of view? - Have you ever considered entering the robotics space? A Wolfram Robotics, so to speak? - But if people delegate all calculations to the machines, then might it not happen that the machine actually learns to ask better questions than the humans can, since the machines have the experience built from the calculations and the humans don't? - What will AI not be able to do? Do you believe that something like that exists? - Tiny humans care about those questions about clouds and trees. - Robotic trade shows sound interesting. The company Boston Dynamics shows a lot of progress in the humanoid department. - Anything to say about the future of pi? (Happy Pi Day!) - Do you expect LLM development to hit significant diminishing returns within the next 2–3 years? - Automated theorem proving is so interesting. I'm trying to figure out how to make a theorem prover that demonstrably collapses a/the wavefunction. Like Stephen said; quantum LLMs.
Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language; the author of A New Kind of Science; and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. Over the course of nearly four decades, he has been a pioneer in the development and application of computational thinking—and has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions and innovations in science, technology and business.
On his podcast, Stephen discusses topics ranging from the history of science to the future of civilization and ethics of AI.
New Zealand